


Star-Spangled

by Gin_Juice



Series: picture book [5]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Allison is having a Very Bad Day, Barbecue, Family Bonding, Family Dynamics, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Fourth of July, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Canon, Sibling Bonding, Underage Drinking, Vanya is there to help, if you count Five as underage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 03:30:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19242922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gin_Juice/pseuds/Gin_Juice
Summary: "Happy birthday to you!"They had three different types of macaroni salad, no hamburger buns, and a dead man was teaching them how to use a grill."Happy birthday to you!"Five was drunk. Allison was hungover. Mom was still trying to wrap her head around why they were eating outside."Happy birthday, dear America!"Diego could deal with all that, but Luther just HAD to keep one-upping him, didn't he?"Happy birthday to you!"_____________________________________________The Hargreeves have many talents, but party planning is not one of them. In the spirit of the holiday, they still manage to make it work.





	Star-Spangled

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a series, but you don't have to read previous installments to follow along. There are a few little details that make more sense if you've read the other stories, but nothing super important. 
> 
> Basically-- The apocalypse has been averted, and the kids are working on becoming a real family. Luther, Five, Klaus, and Ben's ghost live at the Academy. Klaus is getting much better at using his powers, but still hasn't managed to find Dave. Allison lives in L.A. but visits frequently, and Diego lives at the gym but is at the house all the time. Vanya is slower to warm up, but she's getting there.

The heat was oppressive, and the car’s air conditioning was doing nothing to stop Diego from sweating. Leather had not been a wise choice.

He pulled into the driveway and turned the engine off, looking speculatively at the macaroni salad in the passenger seat.

How fast did mayonnaise go bad?

The air was already thick with the scent of smoke, and he assumed someone—Luther, or maybe Five—had started getting the grill ready. He was a bit relieved that they were handling it. He wasn’t entirely certain what the process for that was, and he’d never hear the end of it if he set the backyard on fire.

He made a pit stop in the kitchen, and found Allison sitting at the table with her head in her hands while Mom flitted around humming.

“Hey,” he said, coming to a stop next to her.

Allison usually went in for a hug any time she saw one of them, and he opened his arms a little in anticipation, but today she just moaned while he stood there like an idiot.

He tossed the container of macaroni salad down on the table with a scowl. “Nice to see you, too.”

“No talking,” she pleaded. “I’m dying.”

“You aren’t dying, dear,” Mom called over her shoulder. “No need to be frightened!”

“What’s the matter?” asked Diego, eyeing Allison warily. “Are you sick?”

“Just stupid,” she mumbled into her hands. “Drank a whole bottle of wine last night. Big mistake. Huge.”

“Oh.”

Allison wasn’t normally much of a drinker. His finely-honed powers of deduction led him to believe that this had something to do with the fact that she was spending the holiday here, with her siblings, rather than in L.A., with her daughter.

If their positions were reversed, Diego thought, Allison would probably come up with something good to say, to make him feel better. Like that she was glad he was there, or that she liked spending time with him. Some nice shit like that.

“I made macaroni salad.”

Allison looked up at him blearily. “I think Mom did, too.”

Their mother was examining the container he’d brought with great enthusiasm. “My little chef!”

Diego glared down at his shoes. He’d worked really hard on that, too. It took a long goddamn time to cook pasta on a hot plate.

Allison rose from her seat with a groan. “I’m going to go take another wake-up shower. If I don’t come back in an hour, I probably drowned.”

Diego wished he had a hangover cure to offer her, but he’d never gotten drunk in his life. One time while he was in the police academy he had had three beers and started contemplating asking the girl at the end of the bar if she wanted to dance—like, in _public_ —so he’d steered clear of alcohol ever since.

He turned to Mom as Allison trudged from the room. “Need help with anything?”

“No, no,” she said while she sliced vegetables. “Why don’t you run along and see what your brothers are up to? I’ll set the table.”

Diego blinked. “Uh. It’s a barbeque, Mom. We’re going to eat outside.”

She smiled at him in the way she did when something wasn’t adding up in her mind. “Animals eat outside, dear.”

“Well, yeah, but people do too, sometimes.”

“Oh. Well!” She clapped her hands, still looking confused. “I’ll bring everything to the backyard, and you can all have your lunch with the ants and the bees.”

“… Thanks, Mom.” He scratched at the back of his neck and glanced quickly around the room to make sure they were alone. “Love you.”

“I love you, too, dear.”

They had never spent much time in the yard when they were kids, but Luther had begun transforming it into a usable space after the old man died. Although Diego would never tell him so, he’d done a good job back there.

There were two unruly patches of purple and blue flowers, and a rosebush surrounded by a family of cement ducks. The stupid tomato plants, which were starting to look as though they were thinking about growing some actual tomatoes. The grill and the patio set they had purchased for this occasion, painstakingly assembled by himself and Five, and an inflatable Dora the Explorer kiddie pool.

That one had probably been Klaus’s contribution. Diego doubted Luther would even fit into it.

The two of them were talking over by the grill, though it didn’t look as if they’d started cooking anything yet. Five sat at the table with a crossword puzzle and a glass of lemonade, and Diego gave him a clap on the shoulder as he walked past.

“… be ready in another fifteen minutes,” Klaus was telling Luther. “Then for anything you want to sear, you start on the hotter side, and move it over to the other side to finish.”

“Okay.” Luther toyed with the barbeque tongs he held. “Just come back when I cook the chicken, okay? I don’t know how to tell when it’s done, and I don’t want to give anybody food poisoning.”

The hell was going on here?

“Since when do you know how to use a grill?” Diego asked.

Klaus was wearing a pair of booty shorts that said ‘BITE ME’ on the butt, and when he turned around, he revealed that his crop top said ‘HOTDOG EATING CHAMP.’  

Diego imagined this was Klaus’s idea of haute couture.

“Diego!” he whooped. “Happy 4th of July!”

He put his hands on his hips and dropped his cheery facade. “See, _that_ is how you greet people, you don’t come storming in and start throwing around insults.”

“Klaus. Happy 4th of July. I know for a fact that you can’t cook.”

“Neither of us has ever used a grill before,” Luther informed him. “There’s a ghost who’s telling Klaus what to do, and then Klaus is telling me.”

His face turned hopeful. “Do you know how to grill? I can help you, and then the ghost can… go do ghost stuff. I’m sure he has other plans.”

“Nope!” said Klaus. “He’s not even American, so he doesn’t really care about the holiday. He just has strong opinions on barbeques.”

“Oh.” Luther fiddled with the tongs a little nervously. “That’s… lucky. For us.”

“Right? I’m going to get a drink, be right back!”

Luther watched with a grimace as Klaus sashayed into the house, then turned to Diego and leaned in close.

“He’s been here all morning,” he said in a low, urgent voice.

“He lives here. Where were you expecting him to go?”

“No, not Klaus, the ghost!” He waved the barbeque tongs around, eyes darting anxiously from the backdoor to the patio table. “He’s been really helpful, but—it’s weird. It’s _so_ weird. I don’t—Where do you think he went?”

“Fuck if I know,” Diego said with deliberate nonchalance, stretching out his shoulder. “I’m not the one who can see—Wait, what’s that?!”

Luther spun around in wild-eyed alarm to look at the spot he was pointing at.

The squirrel scurried away, startled by the sudden movement.

“Boo,” Diego said smugly.

Klaus remerged from the house with a can of soda in his hand and Vanya at his heels.

“Look who I found!” he said as he hopped down the last step.

“Happy 4th, everybody.” She offered a tentative smile and held up the plastic container she carried. “I made macaroni salad.”

Allison wandered out as Luther was preparing to start the hotdogs, wearing a large pair of sunglasses and the grim expression of a celebrity who was attempting to avoid the paparazzi.

“Hey,” she muttered as she slumped into the seat next to Vanya.

“Hey.” Luther set the plastic packaging aside and glanced up at her. “Feeling any better?”

She sighed. “It is five thousand degrees out here, I am the most hungover I have ever been, and—and!—I just started my period.”

Luther’s mouth puckered. “ _Oh,_ ” he said, in an oddly high-pitched voice. “That, uh… that sounds rough. I’m going to go start cooking, so... Good luck? With… with that.”

Diego hopped up from his seat. “I’ll help,” he offered hastily.

Five clicked his pen, studying his crossword puzzle. “What’s an eight letter word for ‘an adult man who still acts like a teenage boy?’”

“Man child,” suggested Allison.

“Peter Pan?” Vanya guessed.

Klaus snapped his fingers. “Lil’ bitch!”

Five pointed the pen at him. “That’s the one.”

Diego threw a dirty look at them over his shoulder as he strode away.

As glad as he was not to be stuck talking about… female troubles, the only alternative at the moment was talking to Luther, and that honestly wasn’t much better.

He crossed his arms over his chest and mean-mugged the grill while Luther arranged the hotdogs. They both watched them sizzle for a few minutes.

Luther cleared his throat. “So. Uh. How’s everything at the gym?”

Diego pursed his lips. What, time for another round of _‘I live in a mansion, you live in a boiler room_ ’ already? At least he paid rent on that boiler room.

“Fine.”

“Cool.” Luther shifted his weight to his other leg. “So… How about your vigilante stuff? How’s that going?”

Oh, come on! He got arrested for crossing police tape _one_ time, and now it’s all ‘ _Hur hur hur, you fight any crime today or do you need me to bail you out again, hur hur?_ ’

Dick.

“Fine.”

“Good. Good.” He prodded at a hotdog for no discernible reason. “You… read any good books lately?”

Jesus _Christ_ , _lots_ of adults collected comics these days! It was a valid hobby and he wasn’t going to stand there and be mocked by a guy whose literature of choice was the backs of cereal boxes.

“Plenty,” he snapped. “How about _you_ , Luther?”

Luther blinked, looking confused. “Actually, yeah. I finally got around to reading _An Inconvenient Truth._ It’s pretty good.”

Okay, that was… an adult book. About sciencey-type stuff.

…Fuck.

Diego glared at him. “I’m going to see how Mom’s doing,” he said coldly.

“Oh. Okay, bye!”

Klaus was sitting on the kitchen counter looking pleased with himself while their mother fussed over a very-solid Ben.

“Oh, how nice that you’re all here!” she exclaimed as he obligingly bent down to let her plant a kiss on his forehead. “You can all eat your meal outdoors together! Like a pack of wolves.”

Klaus swung his legs and watched her with a fond smile. “Just wait until you find out about picnics.”

Ben’s face lit up when he saw Diego and he surged forward to pull him into a hug.

Diego squeezed him back tight, resting his cheek against his hair.

“Good to see you, man,” he said roughly.

Ben stepped away and beamed up at him with unmistakable affection. “You are so fucking sweaty. You should’ve worn a T-shirt, dude.”

Ben wanted to try his hand at grilling, so after making sure Mom didn’t need any help, Diego retrieved the ground beef from the fridge and headed back outside.

They passed Five on his way to get more lemonade, and he stoically allowed Ben to embrace him for a full six seconds. Diego counted.

“He’s in a good mood,” Klaus remarked as Five closed the door behind him. “I spilled my soda on his crossword a little bit ago, and he didn’t even threaten to kill me or anything.”

Diego narrowed his eyes at the door in suspicion. What was in that lemonade?

Vanya was helping Allison pull her hair up into a bun to get it off of her neck, and Ben jogged over to greet them. Luther watched with a thoughtful expression.

“Hey, Klaus,” he said as they drew closer. “Do you think you can make the other ghost physical, too? So we can talk to him directly, I mean. And see him. And know where he is.”

He glanced surreptitiously over his shoulder.

“He didn’t want me to,” Klaus said with a shrug. “I told him he could just do all the grilling himself if he likes it so much, but he said we’ll never learn how that way. Anyway, Ben’s going to take over as your translator, so I’m off to take a dip in the pool. Toodles!”

Luther looked beleaguered as Klaus skipped across the yard.

Diego squinted at something just over his brother’s head. “Wait, Luther, don’t move.”

He grumbled out a sigh. “I’m not falling for that twice.”

“No, for real. There’s a wasp.”

Luther scrunched up his face, eyes glinting with distrust. “Is there really a wasp?”

“Yes.”

“Because you know I’m allergic to wasps.”

“…There isn’t really a wasp.”

“And I’m not really allergic.”

Luther smiled down at him in that infuriatingly superior way he had.

Fuck!

Ben chose that moment to join them, hopping up on his tip-toes to sling an arm around Luther’s shoulders.

“Hey! What are we grilling now? Can I flip it over? It smells really good.”

Luther handed him the spatula and took a step back. Ben stared at the burgers with a smile of eager anticipation. Diego watched a ladybug crawl across his shoe. None of them spoke.

…Was this male bonding? Male bonding was fucking dumb.

“I think we should get a kitten,” Ben announced out of the blue. He looked between them. “Dogs are good, too, though. Or a bunny? We should get _something._ ”

Luther’s brow creased. “Well… I dunno, Ben. I’m not sure that…”

He trailed off, taking in their brother’s hopeful face.

Ben would nurture the shit out of anything fuzzy, Diego knew, but he also didn’t have a physical body most of the time. Klaus could barely remember to feed himself, and Five… _pfft._ If they got a pet, it was very much going to be Luther’s responsibility.

He let out a long sigh. “Maybe a cat,” he said wearily. “Can we talk about it more later, though? I need to get something to drink, it’s boiling out here.”

Diego watched his lumbering, forlorn figure slog across the yard.

He gave Ben a light kick behind the knee. “You’re definitely getting a pet, bro.”

“Yeah.” Ben grinned at him as he flipped over a burger. “He can’t tell me ‘no’ for anything. I feel _kind_ of mean for asking, but whatever. I really, really want a freaking cat.”

Diego snorted, although in all honesty, he was pleased for him. Ben had been desperate for a pet, any kind of pet, when they were kids. It only seemed fair that he finally got to live out one childhood dream.

“Well, I’m on board with anything that annoys Luther.”

Ben gave him the side-eye. “Diego. Come on. He’s not, like, the actual devil.”

Diego narrowed his eyes at him. He and Ben hung out all the time while he chauffeured Klaus the Unlicensed around, and he’d thought they had gotten pretty close over the past few months. Where the hell was this coming from? It felt unfair.

His brother pointed the spatula at him. “Don’t look at me like that,” he warned. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“Yeah? Do you? Because it’s not a number between one and ten.”

Ben rolled his eyes. “Look. He’s trying, okay? And if you act like you hate him for long enough, he’s eventually going to start believing it.”

He poked at one of the burgers with a small frown. “And that’s all I’m going to say about that. Anyway. The ghost says these are medium-rare right now. How well do you want yours done?”

Diego stiffened. Had the dead guy been standing there listening to their whole conversation?

Maybe Luther was on to something, because that was pretty unsettling _._

“I only eat red meat when I have a fight coming up,” he said, taking a step back. “I’ll have some of the chicken later.”

Ben nodded and then tilted his head like he was listening to something Diego couldn’t hear. He quickly made his way back over to the patio table.

Five was sitting down with yet another glass of lemonade, while Allison was pulling off her shirt to reveal a bikini top.

Vanya leaned down to scoop a handful of ice out of the cooler. “Ready? One, two, three, cold.”

She wiped the ice across Allison’s bare upper back while she hissed and jiggled her leg.

“Oooh, cold! Cold! Freezing! Oh my God! Okay, yeah, now it feels kind of good. Thanks, Vanya.”

“Sure.”

That was female bonding, he guessed. Or maybe his sisters were just two weird little peas in a pod.

 It was kind of cute either way, and a small needy piece of him wished Vanya would be that relaxed with him, but… well, whatever. He glared at the table.

Klaus, who had been splashing his feet around in the kiddie pool while smoking a cigarette, dropped the butt into his soda can and came over to join them.

“Are you guys suuuure you don’t want to go swimming with me?” he asked. “The water’s perfect. I think I saw a dolphin.”

“Where’d you even get that thing?” asked Diego.

Their mother had brought out the side dishes, and he selected a slice of watermelon and a scoop of macaroni salad.

Mom’s macaroni salad, to be specific. She made it the best.

“Somebody was throwing it out,” said Klaus. “A perfectly good pool! Capitalism strikes again.”

“They weren’t throwing it out,” Five told him. “You just stole it from some little girl.”

The smile slid off of Klaus’s face. “Wait, really? You think? It was on the sidewalk!”

“The sidewalk at a house without a front yard. It still had water in it.”

Klaus shuffled his feet around. “Well, now I feel bad. Why didn’t you say something when we found it?”

Five shrugged and took a long sip of his lemonade. “What am I, your keeper?”

Diego scoffed and grabbed a plastic knife and fork to begin cutting up his watermelon. Vanya watched him with a peculiar little frown before looking across the yard to Luther.

Diego’s eyes followed in the same direction. He was slapping Ben on the shoulder with one too-large, too-hairy hand, wearing a big, dumb smile on his big, dumb face.

He didn’t hate the sight.

Had he ever truly hated him? He couldn’t remember. What he did remember was frustration, and a lot of it. Frustration that he was always second best, and that his brother saw him as a nuisance rather than a serious rival. Frustration that Number One was brave and confident and didn’t stutter during interviews, that he was never jealous or lonely or insecure like Diego was.

Frustration that for so long Luther had allowed their father to mold him after his own image, arrogant and cruel, when Diego _knew_ he had so much goodness deep inside of him.

He took a savage bite out of his watermelon and looked away.

Fucking Luther.

“I kind of want something to eat, but I don’t want to puke,” Allison was saying as she eyed Five’s plate. “Maybe… hmm. A toasted hotdog bun with ranch dressing on it?”

Klaus applauded. “You should be like, a hangover chef,” he told her around a mouthful of fruit salad.

Vanya tossed the ice she’d been running across Allison’s neck into the grass. “I’ll get it. Sit here in the shade.”

As she went inside, Five stood up from his seat, gaze trained on the pool.

“S’hot out here,” he mumbled in a distant voice.

The rest of them watched in hushed amazement as he walked over to it, slow and sauntering, and kicked off his shoes. He planted both feet in the water and took a gulp of his lemonade.

“Refreshing,” he announced.

“This barbeque is out of control,” said Klaus.

Luther approached the table carrying a bottle of water.

“So, small problem,” he said. “We don’t have any hamburger buns.”

Diego stood up. “On it.”

“No, I’ll go,” Luther told him. “Can you stay at the grill with Ben? So the food won’t burn if he turns invisible.”

Diego’s first instinct was to argue, but as Ben’s words filtered through his mind, he bit his tongue.

“Okay.”

If Luther was surprised by his willingness to cooperate, he didn’t let on, so Diego checked him with his shoulder as he walked past. Just to remind him that he wasn’t going to take any bullshit.

“While you’re out, pick up some macaroni salad!” Five called across the yard. He was now sitting down in the kiddie pool, still fully-dressed. “We only have enough to last through the winter!”

Yeah, there was definitely more than lemonade in that glass.

No sooner had Luther left the yard and Diego taken up his post next to Ben than a loud boom sounded overheard.

Diego frowned up at the sky. Why did people insist on setting off fireworks while it was still too bright to see them? Every goddamn year.

“Ooh!” At the table, Klaus abandoned his hotdog to sprint into the house, and Diego stared after him with a little unease. He’d been worrying about this for a few days—veterans and explosions and all.

“Maybe you should go check on him,” he told Ben.

Ben turned away from the grill. “Hm?”

“Uh. Nothing.”

He scowled at the burgers, feeling a bit helpless. What were they going to do if Klaus started freaking out? Maybe he could tell Allison to hug him?

But then Klaus came running back outside, happy as a clam and waving a long, thin package around.

“Sparklers!” he informed everyone in the yard, and probably everyone in the neighborhood.

Diego rubbed his neck. He should have figured Klaus wouldn’t be spooked by sudden loud noises. He was basically just a series of sudden loud noises himself.

Vanya had returned with Allison’s ranch sandwich, which didn’t seem to be sitting well. She had turned in her chair to put her head between her knees while Vanya frantically scraped out a bowl.

“Happy birthday to you,” Klaus intoned as he lit a sparkler that he’d stuck upright into a slice of watermelon. “Happy birthday to you!”

Allison’s shoulders heaved.

“Oh shit!” Ben gasped. “We don’t have any cheese to put on the burgers! Did Luther leave already? Man, we are really bad at planning parties.”

“Happy birthday, dear America—“

“I met Christopher Columbus once,” Five announced loudly. “He was a real prick. A prick in a stupid hat.”

“Happy birthday to you!”

Allison vomited into the grass.

The back door swung open, and Mom stepped outside.

“Look, children!” she called brightly. “The police are here!”

She turned her head to speak to someone in apologetic tones over her shoulder. “They’re having a barbeque, you see. They don’t usually eat outside.”

Diego approached, frowning in bewilderment. Two uniformed officers were following her, one of whom he had never seen before, and the other a young guy he’d spotted doing crowd control at crime scenes a few times.

The one he recognized froze when he caught sight of him.

“Good Lord,” he snapped. “What are you doing here? Don’t you any have friends or family to spend the day with?”

Diego set his jaw. “This _is_ my family,” he said in indignation.

The officer’s gaze panned out across the yard. Diego tried to imagine what they looked like, from his perspective.

There was Ben, dressed in layers on the hottest day of the year so far, discussing cheese with an invisible man. Klaus, the hotdog eating champ, lighting a cigarette off of a sparkler. Vanya, in typical fashion, was sitting quietly and doing nothing to draw attention to herself, but that was more than made up for by the visibly intoxicated minor sitting fully-clothed in an inflatable pool and Hollywood’s Allison Hargreeves, puking her guts out into a salad bowl.

The young cop turned back to Diego. “This explains so much.”

Diego grunted. “What do you want? Nobody here called the police.”

“Oh, no, but one of your neighbors did.” He flipped open a small notebook and ran his finger down the page. “Four—no, _five times_ , in fact! Let’s see, at 10:22 this morning, they first called to report that someone at this address stole their daughter’s swimming pool—“

“Are you serious?” Diego burst out. “What neighbor is this? They couldn’t come knock on the fucking door and ask for it back?”

The officer cleared his throat and read out loud from his notes. “Dispatch advised caller this matter could be resolved without police intervention. Caller expressed reluctance to approach neighbors himself.”

He sounded like he was enjoying this.

He flipped the notebook closed and gave Diego a smirking smile. “Listen, the 4th of July is a busy day for us, and we’ve got quite a backlog of low-priority calls at the moment. So it would really, _really_ help us out if you could work your magic to make sure this poor little girl gets her pool back.”

In a grave tone, he added, “You’re the only man I trust with the job.”

Diego gritted his teeth. “They can have the stupid thing,” he snapped. “It was a misunderstanding anyway.”

He forced himself to add a terse, “Thanks.” If he pissed them off and they decided to slap Five with an underage drinking citation, there would be blood.

The officer nodded. “My pleasure. Happy 4th!”

He headed back up the steps, signaling for his partner to follow him.

“You just make friends all over the place, don’t you?” Ben asked, amused.

“Shut up,” muttered Diego. He swiveled around to the patio table. “Klaus! Hey, Klaus, you need to tell me where you found the—“

But Klaus wasn’t listening. He was staring wet-eyed and trembling at something on the back steps, looking like… well, like he’d seen a ghost.

“Dave,” he said, his voice strangled by joy and disbelief. “ _Dave!_ ”

{}{}{}{}{}

An hour later, Luther and Diego sat at the table eating while Ben shut the grill down. It was barely 5 p.m., but the barbeque was effectively over.

That probably wasn’t the worst thing in the world. They’d gone close to three hours without any blow-out arguments, and to keep it going any longer would just be tempting fate.

Luther licked ketchup off of his fingers and looked up at the sky thoughtfully. “So, wait. How did he know about the time travel and the Apocalypse and everything?”

“Klaus told him and forgot about it. He was all hopped up on mescaline, he said.” Diego shrugged and took a bite of his chicken. “He thought it was the drugs talking at first, but then Klaus disappeared into a metal box or some shit and… I dunno. It got confusing.”

The story had been relayed in bits and pieces by Ben, since Klaus was too worked up to make Dave physical at first.

From what Diego had gathered, the only thing he _hadn’t_ known was when Klaus would make his fateful trip into the past. He’d wanted nothing more than to be at his side, supporting him through a lifetime of bad luck and worse choices—but he couldn’t ignore the fact that Klaus hadn’t recognized him upon arriving in Vietnam. There was a timeline to consider.

And so, with longing in his heart and the fate of the world in the balance, Dave had kept his distance.

Then the spring of 2019 had come and gone with the earth in one piece, and he’d started getting impatient.

That afternoon, he’d been watching some kids set off firecrackers in an alleyway when the police arrived to shut it down. A call came in over their radio about the angry guy who kept bitching that someone at the Hargreeves Mansion had stolen his pool, so he’d decided to tag along out of curiosity, and… here they were.

“Did you get to meet him?” Luther asked.

“Not really.”

Klaus _had_ finally managed to make him corporeal through his hysterical blubbering, but there had only been time for him to say “Hi, nice to meet you all, I’m—“ before Klaus’s tongue was down his throat.

Diego coughed. “He seemed nice, I guess. Nice to Klaus.”

He had seemed tender and gentle and wholly in love with Klaus, in fact.

Luther nodded and swallowed his mouthful of burger. “Okay. Good.” He tipped his head at the kiddie pool. “Do we know where this thing came from?”

“No. Klaus is… busy. Five knows, but I don’t think he’ll be much use until tomorrow.”

He’d gone downhill fast after Luther left. After getting Allison tucked into bed for a nap, Vanya’d had to coax him into the house as well, since he kept teleporting away from Diego when he tried to grab him. He still wasn’t used to adjusting his alcohol intake for a 13-year-old body, it seemed.

Luther set his burger down and sighed. “I was gone for like twenty minutes,” he said plaintively.

Diego bit back a sharp retort. “I had things under control.”

“Yeah. I know.” Luther offered him a lopsided smile. “It was just a lot to walk into. That’s all.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Ben had done a good job on the chicken. Maybe it was a little ironic that the sibling who couldn’t eat had done most of the cooking, but he hadn’t wanted to let Diego take over when he offered.

“This went pretty well,” Luther said suddenly. “The barbeque, I mean.”

Diego shrugged. “Klaus had a good day. Allison, not so much.”

“Ben had fun. Five had too much fun. Vanya got barfed on a little bit, but she didn’t seem mad.” Luther smiled at him. He had ketchup smeared on his upper lip. “I had a good time, too. I like the macaroni salad you made.”

Diego ducked his head and crammed a large chunk of chicken into his mouth. “Thanks,” he muttered.

Fucking Luther, being all nice and shit.

He glanced up when Ben sat in the empty chair between them.

“How did everything turn out? It all smells okay, but, you know.” He pointed helplessly at his mouth. “I can’t taste-test it.”

“It’s great,” said Luther.

“Yeah. Thanks, Ben.”

“No problem.” He fiddled with the drawstring of his hood, looking shy. “I never cooked anything before today. The ghost said we did a really good job, for our first barbeque.”

Oh, fuck, the dead guy! He’d completely forgotten about him in all the excitement.

Goosebumps prickled up and down Diego’s arms, and Luther froze mid-chew.

Their eyes met across the table for a brief moment.

“He said to tell you good work on the hotdogs,” Ben went on, oblivious. “They turned out perfect.”

Luther swallowed, his horror turning into wariness. “He said that?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. That’s… nice of him.” He smiled tentatively at a random spot over Ben’s shoulder. “Thank you for all your help, uh… sir.”

“Oh, he left a while ago,” Ben informed them.

Luther sagged with visible relief. Diego carefully kept his own expression neutral, but he could relate. The only spirit he ever wanted to commune with again was Ben. Possibly Dave.

“Don’t worry, though, he’ll be back,” said Ben, like that was reassuring rather than creepy as all hell.

“He’s around kind of a lot, and he said he wants to have me or Klaus show you how to change the air filters in your car, Diego.”

He’d been in his _car?_

“Uh…”

Ben rose from his seat and stretched. “Well, I’m going to hang out with Vanya for a bit before I turn invisible again. See you guys later!”

They both watched him trot across the yard and into the house.

The wind chimes by the back door jingled in the breeze, and the lyrics to ‘Every Breath You Take’ popped into Diego’s head uninvited.

Luther turned to him, looking utterly exhausted. “I want a beer. Do you want a beer?”

Diego hadn’t had a drink in almost nine years. He was leery of that loose, relaxed feeling that came after knocking a few back—it just wasn’t him.

But it had been a _day,_ and he wasn’t about to drive back to the gym when there might be a dead man riding shotgun, and who cared if he got kind of dopey in front of Luther, anyway?

Luther was an idiot. And his brother.

“Sure.”

“Cool. Be right back.”

Left alone in the yard, Diego stretched his legs out on one of the empty chairs. Luther had been right, much as it rankled to admit it. The day had gone pretty well.

Maybe this would turn into a regular thing. He and Luther could stand over the grill and squabble about barbeque sauce. Dave could steer Klaus away from clothing with stupid stuff written on it. Ben could put his cat on a leash and bring it outside because he was the exact type to do that, and Vanya would laugh out loud. Allison and Five would drink only water like responsible citizens. Mom would come sit out in the sunshine with them.

Maybe someday. Next year. Labor Day. Whenever.

He’d be there.

**Author's Note:**

> This was ready to go like a week ago, but then a whole bunch of baseball happened and I had to temporarily redirect my editing energy into sports twitter. Someone shot Big Papi, y'all! 2019 has gone totally off the rails and I want a refund.
> 
> Anyway. I think Diego's comic collection is based mainly around Batman, because he thinks they're a lot alike. In all reality, though, I think he's one more stupid line about knives away from becoming Raphael from the Ninja Turtles. The edgiest turtle.


End file.
